Harnad Response to Fuller: THES May 12 1995

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THERE'S PLENTY OF ROOM IN CYBERSPACE:
SORTING THE ESOTERICA FROM THE EXOTERICA
Response to Fuller

Stevan Harnad

Here are my replies to
Steve Fuller's commentary
on my Times Higher Education [THES] essay
(long version, archived on the THES Web Page):
"The PostGutenberg Galaxy: How to Get There From Here" (Friday May 12
1995). Most of our differences can be traced back to Fuller's failure
to observe the trade/non-trade distinction I stressed in my
introduction. Nothing I said applied to the trade literature; I was
addressing only the non-trade literature, and an even narrower part of
it, namely, non-trade periodicals.

In the longer version of my essay, which Fuller had in hand, this
distinction was even more explicitly stated as the "esoteric vs. trade"
distinction, and some clear criteria were given for whether or not a
given article was esoteric, chief among them being (1) whether the author
wrote with the intention or expectation of selling his words (if so,
the article was trade) and (2) whether that article's specific
readership was large enough to constitute a market (if not, the article
was esoteric).

I had warned that none of what I was saying would make any sense if one
failed to observe this distinction and instead treated these two
categories as if they were one, and Fuller's commentary has fully
confirmed this. [All passages in
italics are quotes from Fuller.]

Fuller:
the "Faustian bargain"... is very much part of the folklore of academic
life. Its image of the profit-driven publisher provides a convenient
scapegoat and remedy for academics who feel that they never quite get
their message across to all who could potentially benefit from it.

I don't know about academic folklore, but in the Faustian bargain I was
referring to, the publisher is as much the victim as the author.
The demonology (irrelevant to the thrust of my THES essay, as we shall
soon see) was spelled out more explicitly in an earlier paper of mine:

"So both the trade author and the
esoteric author had to be prepared
to make a Faustian bargain with the
paper publisher (who was not,
by the way, the devil either, but
likewise a victim of the bargain;
the only devil would have been the
Blind Watchmaker who designed
our planet and its means of publication
until the advent of the
electronic publication era)"
[Harnad 1995a paragraph 2].

The devil, in other words, is the technology of paper -- its cost and
cumbersomeness -- not the publisher. And here too, remembering to make
the esoteric/trade distinction is critical:

"But in a sense the bargain is really
only Faustian for the esoteric
author. The trade author and publisher
share the desire to restrict
their product to those who will pay
for it. The esoteric author
would just as soon no one had to
pay, but he himself is prepared to
barter his words' copyright in exchange
for the immortality only
his publisher can confer on them"
[Harnad 1995a paragraph 4].

Fuller:
The prototype of the Internet, ARPANET, was thus launched in 1969 to
connect Defence Department researchers working all across America...
this history highlights the basic point that if there is, indeed, a
"Faustian bargain" in the life of the mind, it is the one that
academics strike with their sponsors that buys them the leisure to
collectively pursue their studies.

Several things fail to make sense in the foregoing passage:

(1) Yes, the Internet happens to have begun (in part) with ARPANET,
but that's history; the Internet is not controlled by the US Defence
Department. Nor could it be: It's too big, distributed, and
international, involving millions of computers, local area networks,
wide area networks, dedicated phone lines, satellites, etc.

(2) The National Science Foundation still pays about 10-20% of the cost
of the US "backbone," but that will soon be privatised. (I'm not an
expert on these figures: Steve Goldstein
sgoldste@nsf.gov
knows the
exact numbers, and the timetable for the privatisation.)
[Note added in revision: the privatisation took place quietly last month.]
Most of the
rest is paid for by a consortium of Universities and other
Institutional Users, who pay a flat rate so they can then let their staff
and students use it essentially limitlessly. That's the special nature
of a Network. It's a distributed entity, all interconnected. Analogies
are hard to find. It's not like a highway, with tolls per axle, nor
like a phone, with charges by distance or message unit, nor like cable
or satellite TV, with individual subscriptions, nor like a mainframe
computer, with connect and processing time charges, nor like ham or CB
radio -- though the Net involves bits and pieces of all these technologies.

And the irony is that right now it is the Universities and the NSF that
are subsidising use for all of us: in other words, the Net's current
commercial uses are getting a free ride from academe! Once the Net is
privatised, however, and commercial products and services start to flow
on it for fee, my prediction is that all of society will be better off
if the Net's remaining academic uses (especially esoteric publication)
-- by then merely the flea on the tail of the dog -- continue to get a
free ride.

(3) If by academics' "sponsors" Fuller means the Universities that
pay their salaries and the Government sources (like NSF) that support
their research, yes, it is in the interest of both of these not to put a
price tag where none is needed, and nothing is gained. Universities do
not charge their staff library fees, or metre their reading, much less
their writing. Rather, they pay them to do these things (and they don't
call it leisure).

So the military origins of the Internet are irrelevant to the point
being discussed (which is: Should esoteric electronic journals be free
to all readers?). It is in the interests of both the Universities
and taxpayers that scholarship and science should be pursued without
imposing unnecessary costs on the scholars and scientists for doing
so. Paper was a necessary cost; it is no longer necessary. (Nor should
the much more general social question of whether we should have
scholars, sciences, research, universities, etc. at all> be mixed up
with the specific question of whether it still makes sense to charge
scholars for reading one another's work when there is no longer any
need to do so.)

Fuller:
over time professors and students alike have taken full advantage of
its free facility, so that the Internet is on the verge of becoming the
umbilical cord of academic life. Many know first hand that academic
productivity is definitely enhanced by the new regime. What better
time, then, to privatise the entire Internet, putting its virtual real
estate on the market to the highest bidder among those -- including
publishers -- who have an interest in promoting academic work! As the
Internet evolves from a mere convenience to an outright necessity, it
invites thoughts about how much academics -- or their sponsors --
would be willing to pay to continue feeding their technological fix.

Privatising the Internet is one matter. That would simply entail
Universities' adding 10-20% to the flat rate they already pay for
allowing the free read/write access to the global electronic "library"
for all their users. Switching to a fee-for-use model within the
University would, as I suggested, be tantamount to charging students
and faculty for using their library or for writing papers. Or would
Fuller suggest "privatising" University Libraries too, and letting
market forces decide who uses them according to how much he's willing
to pay?

And what do publishers have to do with any of this? If the Internet
were like a paved concrete highway (which it isn't), that still
would not make the publishers the highway-owners! As far as I know,
publishers' specialised expertise (which is in controlling the quality
of the form and content of the written word -- hitherto on paper, but,
in principle, in any medium) would not make them especially apt for
information highway service work. Computer science and information
science sound like better backgrounds for that domain of expertise...

Fuller:
governments will welcome the privatisation of knowledge production as a
way of quickly relieving their overburdened budgets. In that case,
academics should start worrying more about how intellectual property
law might apply to forms of knowledge traditionally regarded as "public
goods".

Not much budgetary burden relief to be had there! But since there
are so many more consumers in secondary schools than in Universities,
why not ease the strain on government budgets by having all of them,
pupils and teachers alike, pay by the peek for access to their books
and blackboards? and an extra surcharge for the right to write an exam?
On the other hand, to tap inelastic demand, privatising access to the
school loo might be an even better source of revenue, our demand for
knowledge being notoriously rubbery.

Fuller:
Harnad's strategy of locating a medium beyond the reach of economic
considerations is no more than a temporary solution, one akin to having
everyone who lives in a high-rent district move to a less expensive
neighbourhood. It will not be long before the latter locale acquires
the property values of the former. The metaphor is telling.

As long as we're telling metaphors, I think it's more like having
everyone take public transport, rather than private limousines...

Fuller:
Harnad gives the impression that paper-based production costs provide
the main economic barrier to free inquiry, when in fact the cost of
renting channels and licencing broadcasters may pose even greater
barriers in the long term. In other words, Harnad may be naive in
assuming that the Internet is more like a publication without paper
than, say, a television with text.

The TV analogy does not work either. Both sending and receiving are
involved. There are no assigned frequencies. According to what I've
heard, with sufficient demand, more than enough bandwidth can be
created to handle all conceivable academic uses till 2020 -- and
commercial uses will of course pay for themselves. (Right now, the
biggest bandwidth is used to transmit porno-graphics; surely that
should get a price tag before Fermat's Last Theorem...)

Fuller:
Is it fair to portray publishers as Mephistophelean
agents in a Faustian bargain with academics?

No it is not, and I have not done so. See above.

Fuller:
To begin with, it is misleading to suggest, as Harnad does, that
authors -- even esoteric ones -- and publishers have had opposed
interests throughout the Gutenberg Era. Only in the late 18th century
do "authors" come to be regarded as more than just the first stage of
the book production process. After chronic book piracy forced
publishers to cut authors' commissions and, in some cases, replace them
with cheaper scribes, authors retaliated by claiming a special legal
status for the kind of work they do that transcends the medium in which
they do it: The print may belong to the publisher, but the words are
the author's own. A cynic could say that modern copyright laws were
thus designed to ensure against low demand by upgrading the quality of
what the author supplies. A more positive gloss was the Romantic image
of the "misunderstood genius" whose works appeal only to an esoteric
clique. Though it first applied to poets, philosophers and scientists
soon adopted this image as their own.

I have difficulty finding a focus in the preceding paragraph, but one
thing is clear. It hopelessly conflates the esoteric and trade
literature and is hence not pertinent to the points I was making in my
essay. This general history of the printed word is not relevant to the
kind of periodical publishing I am talking about; only the short
history of the modern refereed learned serial is.

Fuller:
Now consider the 'self-organizing" form of academic life known as "peer
review". It was designed, not to allow academics to hide from their
sponsors in esoteric splendour, but to dictate the terms on which
academics accounted for their use of their sponsors' resources. When
the first scientific journals were founded in 17th century Britain and
France, editors were cast in the role of trusted correspondents with
the leading scientific minds, whose letters they would edit for
gratuitous metaphysical jargon and personal nastiness. Thus scientific
writing was first standardized. Eventually the single correspondent was
replaced by the editorial board and more specialized referees.

Interesting, but nothing relevant to the points under discussion
follows from it. At present the system is roughly this: A great deal is
written by scholars and scientists for fellow-specialists. No one else
(including "sponsors") is interested in reading it, even though this
exchange of information is (in the case of biomedical and technological
research) of potential immediate benefit to us all, and in the case of
other areas of scientific and scholarly research it is regarded as
contributing to human knowledge and culture.

The quality of this vast and growing esoteric literature is maintained
by a system of
peer review
-- adjudication (including guidance in
revision) by fellow-specialists, implemented and mediated by specialist
Editors. This is how an article finds its own level in the hierarchy of
journals in any given area (almost everything eventually gets published;
the only question is: in what form, and where?). And this is how a
specialist reader can calibrate his finite reading time by restricting
it to as much or as little of the hierarchy as he wishes (top-down). No
one has yet proposed an equivalent or superior substitute for the
(imperfect, human) peer-review system for validating and triaging this
huge, no-market corpus. Peer review is a medium-independent means of
quality control serving authors, readers, and sponsors alike.

Fuller:
While standardization is often said to be a prerequisite for genuine
knowledge growth, a more pressing historical reason for disciplining
scientific communication was to ensure that the scientists'
aristocratic patrons were not unnecessarily confused or offended. The
aristocrats supported scientific societies in order to be amused,
edified and, in some cases, technically empowered. Peer review
instituted the decorum needed to persuade patrons that their money was
well spent.

Today it is not the few aristocrats but the taxpaying multitudes who
support research and education. In cancer research, for example, the
taxpayer does not wish to be amused or edified, but to be cured of his
ailments. Medieval studies are not supported for technical empowerment
but to continue to foster our common heritage of learning. The taxpayer
does not seek decorum for his dollars, but assurance that the work
being supported is of the best feasible quality of its kind, as judged
by those who are able to read and judge its quality: those who have
devoted their lives to becoming specialists in the subject matter in
question.

Fuller:
In these developments, publishers have often functioned as correctives
to the pursuit of esoteric inquiries fostered by peer review. They
continue to encourage academics to write books that are suitable for
either students or general audiences.

No doubt, and a valuable service that was, and will continue to be, both
in paper and on the Net. But my essay has nothing whatsoever to say
about it, because it concerns no-market esoteric periodicals, not
wide-market books, with which they should no longer be conflated, now
that the PostGutenberg Galaxy is within reach.

Fuller:
Of course, publishers have also expedited the specialization of
academic journals. But that would not have become such an attractive
financial proposition, had academics not been allowed to set their own
paths of inquiries, and hence settle into ever narrower domains whose
state-of-the-art is defined by one or two journals. Once academic
specialists agree that a certain journal is "essential reading" for
their field, they deliver a captive audience to publishers that is too
good to resist.

But the captive audience is not the readership of the journals, it is
the institutional library that must have the entire journal in hand for
the few, if any, who ever consult any particular article. This was all
well and good in the Faustian era, with the diabolical cost of paper
publication, but it is no longer true in the PostGutenberg era, when
the captives can at last be set free.

Fuller:
The result has been to place at risk the future of the most
creative aspect of publishing: Marketing. Academics tend to see
publishing as little more than a matter of editing manuscripts and
printing books and journals. Such dualistic thinking breeds the kind of
"Us versus Them" rhetoric with which Harnad discusses publishers.
However, in their search for new markets, publishers have been leaders
in giving voice to groups whose interests cut against those of the
established academic fiefdoms. Prominent recent examples include
women's studies and cultural studies, two fields that received
considerable attention from publishers before receiving formal academic
recognition.

Again, I had difficulty finding a focus in this passage. Bravo for
publishers who find markets for their books and journals. Bravo for the
promotors of women's and cultural studies. But what have these to do
with the matter at hand? One needs creative marketing (I doubt
publishers will agree that that's their craft's crown jewel) only where
there is a product to be sold and a market to be created. Anyone and
everyone with access to the Internet is already an esoteric author's
potential "market." [Please do not raise the issue of lack of access
for all to the Internet: that is a rationale for redoubling efforts to
ensure access for all on the Internet, not for restricting the
literature to paper, or for adding a price-tag to Internet access.]
Finding that "market" is surely better entrusted to the growing
armamentarium of powerful new informational tools (indices, specialised
and cross-specialty classification systems, search tools, knowbots,
etc.) that are unique to the electronic medium, rather than to the market
economics of the trade literature.

Fuller:
Here it is worth recalling that not all academic fields are constituted
in the same way. Sociologically speaking, there is little reason to
think that the success of journals in fields as different as high-
energy physics and Harnad's domain of cognitive science can be
explained in terms of their common characteristics. Whereas high-energy
physics is probably the most intellectually focussed and socially
stratified specialty in science today, cognitive science is a very
active, but relatively amorphous, interdisciplinary field. The elites
in high-energy physics coordinate their activities to dictate to the
rest of the field, and sometimes to the entire physics community. By
contrast, the success of
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
may be better
explained in terms of the bandwagon effect caused by several elite
cognitive scientists from different parts of the field publishing early
in the journal's history.

Interesting conjectures here, but one would like to see the evidence
supporting them: (1) There is a literature on the differences in peer
review and publication practices in different fields (e.g. Hargens
1990). (2) The
Ginsparg Archive
ain't just high-energy physics any
more. (3) The interdisciplinarity of the Cognitive Sciences will be a
useful next step in extending and generalising Ginsparg's revolution to
the rest of the scholarly/scientific universe. (4) And I'd wait for the
findings of some intellectual historians who actually look closely at
the data before drawing my conclusions about what was responsible for
the success of
BBS...

Fuller:
If one wanted to take Cyberplatonism deadly seriously, then not only
should paper publishing go by the wayside, but also the whole idea of
seeking personal credit for as many articles as possible in
peer-reviewed journals. This idea is not intrinsic to pure inquiry, but
the result of academics having to account for their activities in a
competitive environment involving the allocation of scarce resources.
The aristocratic patrons may be gone, but, as Harnad himself admits,
the Research Assessment Exercise is just around the corner.

Again, this is too scattershot for me: Must one be for overpublication
if one is against the trade model for esoteric publication? Publication
quantity and quality are a medium-independent matter, and depend on peer
review as well as the indirect reward system (both medium-independent)
described in my essay.

As it happens, I do believe (and applaud) the fact that the more
interactive form of publication the electronic medium will make
possible -- over and above merely duplicating the classical peer
reviewed journal hierarchy in cyberspace -- will make scholarly
contributions more collective and distributed than they were in paper
(Harnad 1990,
1991,
1992), with new, more sophisticated
electronic/computational measures of scholarly productivity replacing
publication counts and classical citational analysis. But my essay was
only about launching the classical peer-reviewed literature into the
PostGutenberg Galaxy, not about optimising the process by which
Universities review and reward the peers of their realm.

Fuller:
Who, then, will most likely benefit from Harnad's brand of
Cyberplatonism? If we grant Harnad's (big) assumption that the future
owners of Internet will subsidize all of today's networkers, the answer
seems to be the very same people who currently thrive in print.

The beneficiaries of a free, instantly and constantly accessible
scholarly/scientific literature will be the scholars themselves, their
productivity, and the rest of us, to the extent that we continue to hold
scholarly inquiry to be a worthwhile use of human resources. (The
Internet-subsidy issue is, as I've noted already, a red herring.)

Fuller:
Consider Harnad's call for everyone to post their articles on the World
Wide Web. "Knowbots" notwithstanding, this would only strengthen the
system's elitist tendencies, which sociologist Robert Merton has
euphemistically dubbed, "the principle of cumulative advantage". Faced
with a plethora of titles on a common topic, an author's name
recognition will count more than ever. The sheer availability of a work
by no means guarantees that it will get into the hands of the people
who could most benefit from it. Here marketing can make all the
difference, thus providing a fresh challenge for the 21st century
publisher.

It is very hard to put a sensible construal on the foregoing passage.
Perhaps it's just extreme naivete, but does Fuller really think that
marketing would get my research results to my fellow-specialists
better, faster, or cheaper than the navigational tools of the Net
would, once the entire literature was up there? And why would one
resort to name recognition in cyberspace, with all the other powerful
search options available up there? What, for that matter, prevents one
from using, as a default option, exactly the same selection criteria as
one used in the paper literature (only with a lot less wear and tear on
the feet)?

The connection between following my
subversive proposal
(that all
scholars should, as of today, archive all their papers for free public
access on the Web) and "elitism" entirely escapes me, particularly as
the Net has so far proved to be the Great Equalizer. In principle, it
gives everyone access to a global vanity press that they could not
possibly afford in paper. And if following my proposal did bring down
the paper house of cards, the result would be a migration of the
peer-reviewed literature to its own bit of cyberspace -- a bit the size
of the flea on the tail of the dog, as it is in the paper world: nobody
is talking about a wholesale takeover -- where, first, the status quo,
the refereed journal hierarchies, would merely be duplicated (no net
loss or gain in elitism). Then, the unique power of Skywriting --
interactive publication -- could continue exerting its equalizing
effect, with the possibility of rival peer hierarchies fighting it out
in cyberspace
(Harnad 1990).

Fuller:
Nowadays, a relatively democratic cross-section of the academic
community can be found on the "listservs" and "usenets" that populate
the Internet. Teachers, administrators, and students do not merely
consume the knowledge that cutting-edge researchers generously deposit
on the World Wide Web. They are themselves knowledge producers, and
often incisive critics of what passes for quality in the print and
electronic media. The result is a multiple-registered, rough-and-tumble
atmosphere that has put off some elite inquirers but has empowered many
more. Admittedly, women and minorities remain underrepresented, but
cyber-activists like Sadie Plant are endeavouring to change that.

More apples and oranges: Who disputes or devalues the remarkable
communicative developments that have been occurring in chat-groups on
the Net? Adding a quiet corner to vast cyberspace where peer review
prevails is not at odds with this. To see this clearly, ask yourself
whether you would rather have a loved one treated for a serious illness
on the basis of information from peer-reviewed medical journals, or
from one of the chat-groups where teachers, administrators and students
are on a par with specialists. I am not discussing the virtues of
supplementing an expert opinion with chat-group advice and experience,
I am just talking about the form the specialist medical literature
should take on the Net. I assume the serious replies on this will be
univocal -- that for treating serious illness in the family, the
background research should take the same peer-reviewed form on the Net
as on paper. Well then, ask yourself whether there is a branch of
knowledge about which we are less serious than this, about ensuring that
only reports validated by experts prevail? For if there is such an area
of learned inquiry, I would like to see what its paper journals look
like, in particular, how and why they differ from the material on a call-in
radio show...

Fuller:
Cyberplatonists like Harnad tend to downplay the heterogeneity of the
Internet, perhaps hoping that it will eventually come under the
decorous thumb of peer review. However, if we took Plato's Socratic
dialogues as a model for "free inquiry", anyone would be allowed to
participate in any line of thought wherever it may lead. A discrete
publication would result, if at all, only after considerable
discussion, by which time it would be difficult to identify who
deserves credit for which idea. Crackpots and ignoramuses -- assuming
we know who they are -- would be given their say, but then one would do
the obvious: refute, ignore, or delete. The filtered world of anonymous
refereeing would thus dissolve into open commentary.

First, as one must keep repeating, the decorous thumb of peer review is
only intended for one small region of the Net, the same region, as a
matter of fact, where it prevailed in paper. In addition, the Net
offers much richer competitive possibilities for thrashing out who
counts as a "peer," and which journal hierarchy is the definitive one.
It also allows the added dimension of open peer commentary
(Harnad 1990)
-- in sanctioned as well as renegade peer groups -- to strengthen
the self-corrective function of learned inquiry. Publications may
indeed go through more incarnations, and become more collective than in
the Gutenberg era. That's all well and good. But don't imagine that if
there is no peer-reviewed region at all, to serve as a quality filter
and marker, that any high-powered cyberspace navigational tool will be
able to replace it. You will have no idea what is worth reading -- and
if you base your choice on the results of the opinion poll resulting
from the samplings and judgments of those who have nothing better
to do with their time than to forage into such a vast unfiltered
literature, then you do so at your own peril.

If there is anyone on this planet who is in a position to say so,
surely I, having had a chance to compare peer review with open peer
commentary for almost two decades in a paper journal, and over half a
decade an electronic one, can state unequivocally: peer commentary is a
supplement to not a substitute for, peer review (Harnad 1979, 1982,
1984, 1985, 1986,
1995b).

Fuller:
authors read referees' reports pretty much as editors do, namely, as a
red or green signal for publication.

Incorrect: Editors do not read referee reports this way (especially
since referees often disagree). Mostly referee reports serve to
rank-order submissions as to those that are likely to be acceptable if
revised (and how to revise them) and those that are not. (The rejected
papers usually end up published in some form or other, usually lower down
in the refereed journal hierarchy, or sometimes in the unrefereed vanity
press.) Moreover, authors usually revise in response to referee reports. So
peer review is far from being just a red/green light. It is an active
feedback mechanism for quality control.

Fuller:
Harnad's enthusiasm for quick turnaround times from acceptance to
publication only nurtures this mentality.

Why does (everyone's!) enthusiasm for fast turnaround after successful
revision and acceptance foster the red/green mentality? Editors and
referees are, and are meant to be, brakes on the system, preventing
weak, wrong, unclear, incomplete, irrelevant or unoriginal results from
being published. But after the quality has been controlled?...

Fuller:
However, the reports may wind up playing little or no role in shaping
an author's thought, at least as long as there are other journals to
which the author can submit a rejected piece with minimum alterations.
No wonder referees find theirs to be a thankless lot.

This is true in some cases, but irrelevant to the issue at hand (which
is -- to remind us, amidst all these digressions -- whether esoteric
periodicals should be electronic, whether they should continue to be
sold on the trade/subscription model, whether peer review should be
retained on the Net, and whether authors should publically archive
their papers electronically now). Most accepted authors have revised
their papers in response to the feedback from the referees.

Fuller:
The source of the problem is simply that authors are encouraged to
submit their work in a finished form. By that time, they have normally
become so attached to it that they are psychologically incapable of
grappling with substantial criticism. However, because there is so
little to which one can become attached on the Internet, authors are
more prone to submit drafts with holes that others may be better
positioned to fill. Thus, a genuinely collaborative inquiry may be
fostered.

I suggest that Fuller look at the literature on peer review rather than
just speculate about what authors do and don't do (Harnad 1982, etc.).
(That, at least, is what I would have said if I were refereeing his
essay...)

Finally, the thrust of Fuller's Socrates/hemlock metaphor was, I must
admit, entirely lost on me. What is it that "cyberplatonists" are going
to be forced, by whom, to drink, and to what end?